Has Facebook grown too big for itself?
Has Facebook grown to big for itself & actually listen to the voice of its users?
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Has Facebook grown to big for itself & actually listen to the voice of its users?
Fans are often eager to be the first to know and tell their friends that a favorite band is coming to town. Social media facilitates a certain amount of this organically, but how about harnessing the excitement of a tour launch to amplify the results? For the launch of their co- headlining “This World Is Ours Tour,” Escape the Fate and Attack Attack!‘s management team at The Collective built a custom Facebook app that used fans’ engagement to actually reveal the dates.
Getting involved with your following
When I speak of being engaged, in a Marketing perspective it doesn’t mean to “Put a ring on it”. As we all know, you can be engaged with people by becoming involved whether its in a business aspect or a relationship. As an artist, you should want to have engaging conversations with your fans, interested media outlets, and industry professionals. This will help you to expand your brand and exposure in the industry.
The music blogs lately have been wallowing in pessimism about the new social network from Google. The general line of thought seems to be that Google + is yet another added burden along with Twitter, Facebook, that old website called Myspace, etc. However, Google Plus has several features that no other website or social network offers.
It’s been seven years and Facebook has gone from a small, exclusive social network - for college students only - to now being almost as ubiquitous as your driver’s license. Everybody has it. Even your grandparents. But how much longer will Facebook last? With the advent of Google +, which has started as an exclusive social network - by invite only - it’s appears that Facebook may have finally run its course.
Spotify could add an extra charge if users wanted to make their local files available to their friends via shared playlists. They could do so for an extra charge, to cover the added bandwidth costs and royalties.
Many of you may or may not have heard about the recent change Facebook has made to Pages; ending the use of FBML for custom tabs and replacing them with iFrames. If you have existing tabs using FBML they will continue to work, but you will not be able to add new tabs that use FBML. Moving forward every new custom tab you add will use iFrames. iFrames are type of html programming that in its simplest form imports and displays a website or web page inside a frame, in this case the frame is the custom tab in Facebook. Don’t panic if this sounds complicated or confusing. I just spent the weekend looking for the simplest way to create new Facebook iFrame tabs and think I have a drop dead simple way that anyone can do. If you are running your website on WordPress and can install a new plugin, even better! I am going to try and walk you through doing this without any heavy geek speak or programming. If I cross the line please slap me, lol. Step 1: Visit this Page in Facebook, Static HTML: iframe tabs. Click Add this application to your Page in the left column. Goto your page and click the Welcome tab in the left column.
As a musician do you find it harder and harder to get new fans to listen your music? You’ve probably been using social media like Facebook already to promote your music. If you are wondering if there are ways to improve your success in getting people to check out your music then you are in luck because here are 5 ways that really do work.
1. Use Facebook To Build Your Fan Base By Actually Using It For it’s Intention!
Do not make the mistake of using Facebook personal pages like many musicians used Myspace which is by treating it like a bulletin board to advertise your band. You may get banned and people will get annoyed with you or worse by just ignoring your page. The truth is most people are not interested just because you are in a band. The good news is that once new facebook friends get to know you they may find it interesting that you are in a band and want to know more. Timing is everything. Yes, this process takes longer and has to be genuine but it really works to build your fan base when people can become interested in you as a person first. Start to think of fans as friends who like your music and you will be way ahead of the game. Often times your new friends will want to help you build your fan base too as a bonus!
Here are some quick stats about Facebook and music that basically add up to this – Fans and artists love to connect on Facebook, but not for spending money on music related items.
Apps are where money is made on the social network itself, and the music industry needs to learn how to better take advantage of them. Even RootMusic, the one music-related app in the top 50, simply turns into an app what we already knew – that music fan pages were very popular on Facebook.
I mean this in a tongue in cheek way somewhat.
The reason I say this is because of this question I got one time on a karate forum (More about THAT experience later)
“What are your thoughts on pushing information out to people on the web?”
This is a fair question but it details a common error when it comes to social networking. Social networks are not I repeat NOT TV, radio and press.
YAWMA, an online community and marketplace, launched today. The service allows users to discover, download and share high-quality independently produced digital content through Facebook and earn cash rewards for their participation. YAWMA launched with both independent music and game content.
Your fan page is a great place to aggregate all the content you’ve created on the various social networks you belong to. Your fan page can be the ultimate destination for your fans to find your tweets, blog posts, and even other people who have acknowledged your work.
MySpace, once the best place for anything music related. If you wanted to hear audio from your favourite musician or discover up and coming talent, MySpace was the place to go.
These days however, MySpace is full of musicians promoting to each other. And that wouldn’t be such a bad thing if it led more sales, but the truth is most of the people on MySpace are only in it for themselves. The ‘real people’, the potential fans, have more or less all left, choosing to instead use the multimillion pound social networking website Facebook.
Those forward thinking musicians instantly jumped onto the Facebook train, hoping to pick up fans with their newly set up ‘Facebook fan page’. But while Facebook has allowed musicians to create their own fan pages from near the beginning, it’s never been a complete music solution… That is until now!
Here at Music Without Labels & Beat-Play, LLC we currently represent 320 independent musicians, offering free promotion. There are currently way too many artists today not utilizing social media the right way to promote their music. Facebook has had fan pages for close to 2 years now so don’t represent your band under a “personal” profile. Take a look at the reasons why it is not beneficial to build your music recognition on Facebook through a personal page.